by Imani King
“I can’t make sense of what that woman was doing there. I can’t make sense of what he might have said about me, and I can’t make sense of myself right now.” Every word is true. And every bit of last night and this morning was a disaster of massive proportions—or at least, it feels that way in my mind. I spoke words I haven’t said in more than a year, and I made myself so vulnerable that I can barely think straight right now. And he didn’t say it back—instead, he acted just like he had after every date we’ve had.
Nonchalant. Confident to the point of being arrogant. And most assured that I’d come back to him no matter what.
Maybe it’s a story I’m telling myself, something I’m making up in my head—that he just thinks I’ll keep returning. I have to remind myself of all the things he said before—that he cares for us, that he wants us in our lives, that he’d have us live with him or buy us an apartment in Los Angeles. That he’d bend over backward to do anything for us, just to see us a few times a week.
It’s hard to see these things clearly when the hurt is fresh in my mind, when the confusion sits heavy on my shoulders.
“Get out of your head, Hel. I have an explanation for all of it, and I bet Saint does too. You have to look at him as what he is—he’s a man who has next to no experience with women.” Celia shrugs and wiggles her toes.
There’s no noise from Trixie’s room, finally. After an exciting weekend with her favorite person in the universe, it was hard to calm her down for bed. But still I give Celia a look that says, “Keep it quiet, or you’re re-reading Magic Treehouse to a five-year-old.”
“You must be insane,” I hiss. “He’s said himself that he was a professional manwhore, with a revolving door of women at all times. He even made fun of himself about the whole thing.” Even though the words fly out of my mouth, I remember when I realized that Saint didn’t quite know what he was doing with me.
“Yeah, sure. He knew what he was doing with each and every one of those women, but were they the women he really wanted in his life? Like, long term?” She pauses. “Let me answer my own question since you’re standing there with a look on your face like a deer caught in the headlights. No. Not a one of them is someone he wanted to be with for the rest of his life. But you, my lovely friend, you’re the woman he’s said the real romantic shit too. So what if he didn’t tell you he loved you? So what if some drunk girl showed up, pissed off that she wasn’t the one? You are the one for him. I’ve seen how he looks at you, even from the very first day he saw you.”
“That’s not—I don’t think he looked at me any kind of way...” But I saw it too. I wasn’t making it up. Celia isn’t making it up. And I didn’t imagine all of the promises Saint made—all of the things he said that felt so real and so true. And that man is so honest—he has so many flaws, but dishonesty isn’t one of them.
“He did. You know it. He wants you and Trixie—in his life, in his home. Hell, he’s never had a real home with a woman before. You represent that to him. None of this ‘can’t do this stuff,’ Hel. This is your chance, too, you know.”
“For what? So Trixie doesn’t have to have a single mom?” Anger rises in me, and I stomp hard on the floor.
Cee laughs, getting up to come see me and putting her hand on my arm. “No, girl. Trixie’s got it better than any kid I know with two parents. You give her everything she needs—and you give her discipline and stability and structure. You did it even when you were with Kellan—she never even knew that anything was bad. Her life is full.”
“Then what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you. I’m talking about who you are and what you need, your chance for happiness, the true happiness you deserve. Saint is that. He’s the chance you have at happiness, the right person for you, the one who will be there when you wake up in the morning—and the one who will apologize when stupid shit happens like this.”
There’s a long silence, and both of us go and slump down on the couch. After a while, Cee looks at her watch and packs up her purse to leave.
“You might be right,” I mumble.
Celia grabs my hand and squeezes it as she leaves. “I know,” she whispers back. “I usually am. It’s one of my better qualities.” When Celia leaves, she blows me a kiss before she walks out of the door. I listen to her as she goes down the stairs, and when I hear her car door close, I finally close my eyes and relax.
My nerves are still jangled from wondering if I should have stayed with Saint this morning—but I’m not the kind of woman who sticks around when a man needs to work out his business. I learned a long time ago to let people figure out their shit on their own.
After that, things feel blurry, and there are a few hours where I’m not sure if I’m awake or asleep.
And then, near midnight, I hear a very soft knock at my apartment door. At first, I think I’m dreaming it, but it continues. When I get up and walk to the door, I see Saint’s blue eyes through the peephole.
I sigh deeply, and then—perhaps against my better judgment—I open the door and let him in.
“Quiet, please,” I whisper. “Trixie is asleep.”
“You said that once she’s asleep, she’s down for the night.”
“While that is true, still…” My voice trails off, and the overwhelming feeling of need I feel each time I see Saint rushes through me. Why does this man cloud my mind every time he’s near me?
He takes my hands in his. “I came to tell you something very important.”
I gulp.
This is where everything gets decided.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I want to listen, but I don’t know if I can go on an up and down roller coaster.” She squeezes my hands. “What I said…”
I open my mouth to speak, but she stops me again. She smiles at me, almost wistfully, like she’s reminiscing on good things that won’t ever happen again. I can almost hear the next words she’s going to speak, reverberating in my brain before she says them. And then she delivers, exactly what I thought she was going to say.
“I know you weren’t ready to hear it, it seems like.” She shifts and tries to take her hands away from me. “Maybe we both need to slow things down.”
No, we’re not meant to slow things down. I knew it from the first time I saw you.
It’s what I should say, but of course I don’t. I still have that thing in my brain that prevents me from actually revealing what I’m feeling. It might be that I was the oldest of five brothers, that I always had to be strong for them, kick off anyone who might bully them or make fun of us from being from way out in the country. In truth, I don’t know what prevents me from saying exactly what I need to say right then, except the fact that I’m a total fucking asshole. And I have been ever since I got to high school and discovered women.
“It wasn’t what it looked like, Helena. With Kalani. I didn’t say anything negative about you. Well, I said that I really, really liked you. And I was done with other women—that you thought you were boring, but you’re not. Helena…” Helena’s name rolls of my tongue, and somehow, I feel comforted saying it. Like her name is a prayer, an incantation that centers me in the midst of all this mess. I’m about to give the explanation she needs—the truth that will set me free—but instead, I let my words rest there.
“Stop,” Helena whispers. “Maybe we should do this another time. If Trixie wakes up, she might get the wrong idea.”
“It’s the damn right idea. If she thinks I want to be her father? That’s the right idea. If she thinks I want to be with you for as long as I’m breathing, she’ll have the right idea. If she thinks I’m here to apologize because I’m an asshole who attracts all sorts of ridiculous bullshit like that woman who wandered in my office and got in my lap without any warning, that’s the right idea.” I walk toward Helena.
She raises her hand for a moment, but she puts it down weakly. “You need to keep thinking about this, Saint. Think about what you’re saying…” Her voice waivers and then
trails off. I promised her I’d be honest with her, and I see a flicker of doubt on her face.
“I do expect you to believe that. I told you to trust me, or this wasn’t going to work. This isn’t a test I wanted to put on you. I might be a playboy, but I don’t lie to women. Especially not a woman I’m deeply, madly in love with.”
Helena’s whole body slumps forward, like a heavy weight has been put down upon her shoulders. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it. Please don’t.”
I take her hands in mine again. They’re as smooth and cool as the day I met her, and they feel perfect in my grasp, like this is a thing that’s supposed to be—me touching her. Today and always. “I mean it. I do. I want to be Trixie’s dad. I want to be your—whatever you want. Boyfriend, partner, best friend, husband. All of it. The man who takes you on dates. The man who wakes up next to you in the morning, who makes you soup when you’re sick—”
She laughs. “You don’t know how to make soup.”
“I can heat up a can,” I say. She scrunches up her nose, so I think of a better idea. “Or I’ll get my brother Rowan to teach me. He knows how to cook. That bastard got all the cooking genes in the family, and I got the dumb blond ones.”
She pauses, and then she finally laces her fingers through mine. That simple action sends warmth cascading down my spine. “That woman—what the hell was she doing? Why did she say what she said?”
I sigh and pull Helena over to the couch, so grateful that she’ll even let me sit down next to her. “She was drunk. The doorman let her in because he recognized her. And she said what she said because she was jealous of you. I never said any of those things to her, not like she said. I told her I wanted to be with you, and only you. And she was pissed.”
She laughs. “Okay, fine. But this is all so fast, for you to be coming up here and trying to seduce me all over again.”
“I’m not trying to seduce you. I’m here to tell you I love you, Helena Landon. I can promise you I won’t ever cheat on—or lie to—the woman I love.
“And that’s you, Helena. I was too scared to say it before. But I love you. I want the commitment. I want to go to parent teacher conferences and then take you out to lunch. I want to give you another baby if you want one, and I want to walk you down the aisle. Or to the courthouse. Whatever the hell you want.”
Helena swallows and then looks at me, that gorgeous brown hair falling around her face. Her starburst eyes have tears in them, and I can only hope they’re tears of happiness. “Are you proposing to me? After all of this confusion?” She can’t quite get the words out, and then she stops. There’s nothing else left to say.
“Yes. Yes, I am. Helena, the moment I saw you, it was like I woke up from a long, dreary dream. I thought my life was perfect. I had the company I wanted, I got out of debt, and I had all the women I wanted. But I realized that not one of those women was special, not really. They might be special to someone, but they weren’t to me. Instead, it was just like an assembly line at a factory. The same thing, night after night. After you, the drinks seemed tasteless. And the women even more so. It was almost the instant I saw you too. You were different—smart and funny and challenging to me in a way that I never had before.”
She bites her lip and looks at me, eyes wide. She often doesn’t let herself get vulnerable, at least not in front of me. But I’ve put her there, God help me. I put her there when she saw me with that woman, and I did it again tonight when I came here. But these things have been unsaid for too long, and I need her to hear me, loud and clear. She shifts uncomfortably, almost like she wants to pull away. “It’s not just Trixie you want in your life.” She says it as a statement, not a question, like she’s truly testing the idea.
It occurs to me right then that I’d like to go on the hunt for that Kellan asshole. After she went and had that little girl on her own, she needed a trustworthy man, one who wouldn’t hurt her. Instead, she got just the opposite, and she came to California a broken woman.
“No, it’s not just Trixie. But let me tell you, Hel. That little girl is the most fantastic surprise I’ve ever gotten. I’ll just have to spend the rest of my life deciding who I love more—you or her. But there’s not really an answer, is there? Not when it comes to falling in love with a whole family.”
Helena smiles. “She’s pretty fond of you too, Saint.”
“That little girl is easy to love. She’s beautiful and intelligent, just like her mother. And I think she might have gotten that showing off gene from somewhere else.”
Helena snorts, and her face softens. “I thought you might be, um, gregarious.”
“Obnoxious?”
“Something like that.” She smiles and raises one cool hand to the side of my face, tracing a manicured nail over my jawline and down to the base of my bottom lip.
“Tell me you will, Helena.”
“Tell you what?” She cocks her head to the side in confusion.
“I just proposed to you—”
“No, you gave me a series of statements about what you will do.” She raises an eyebrow. “If you’d like to ask me a question, you can go right ahead, Saint Corbett.”
I laugh, and then I get down on my knees right in front of her, my back butting up against the edge of her coffee table. “Helena Landon, will you do me the honor of being my wife, now and forever, until death do us part and all that jazz?”
She pauses. “Let me think. I guess I will, granted that your doorman doesn’t let any other women inside who want to come and sneer at me.”
“I think we can have that arranged.”
“No exes,” she continues. “No women you’ve slept with showing up at six in the morning.”
“Cross my heart,” I say, a wave of happiness expanding in my chest.
“Then yes,” she says.
I smile and pull her in for a kiss—long and lingering, teeth and tongue brushing against her cherry-red bottom lip, my fingers tangling in her hair. This kiss isn’t like the passionate ones we shared when we first fell into each other’s arms. It’s more like a celebration, something more realistic and adult, something that feels like the beginning of the rest of our lives.
She’s already undoing the buttons on my shirt, and I find myself already growing hard. This woman, she makes me feel like I’m eighteen--like I could go all night long and then some. But there are important things that need to be said first. “Wait, baby girl,” I mutter, my voice thick with desire. “There’s one more thing.”
“If it has to do with any of your ex-girlfriends, you should probably leave it for another day.”
I try not to touch her, but she’s already flushed, so I pull her onto my lap, her legs wrapping around me. She feels so much different than any other woman I’ve held this way—so warm, so real. I can tell she already feels my cock pressing into her thigh, because she groans and scoots in closer, her diaphanous black skirt pushed up over her gorgeous, thick legs. I’m going to bury myself there and not come up for air until morning, but not just yet.
“I know you want to keep your job here. This is the place you have your life.”
She gulps and puts her hands around the back of my neck. “I think we can commute… You love Los Angeles…”
“No, baby. I’ll have my real estate manager looking at some places up in the mountains. There’s one house that has these huge windows on both sides, so you can see the mountains one way and the ocean another. Sunrise and sunset. We’ll have ‘em both. Every day. Ten minutes from the university, and ten minutes from Trixie’s Montessori school.”
This time, there are real tears in her eyes, and she throws her arms around me and pulls me in close, her body warm and rocking against mine. “You’re sure this is okay for your business, Saint?” She whispers the words in my ear, almost sensually.
“Hell yes I am,” I say, nibbling at her neck. The world is starting to fade out around me, and I need her body like an addict needs a drug. “I made that company so I can retire. I’ll just call it a
n early retirement. Stacy runs the damn thing anyway.”
“Okay,” she mumbles. And it’s said with such a tone that I know she means, “Yes. I trust you. Now and forever.”
“There’s one more thing I mentioned offhand. And I’m serious about it.” I almost can’t get the words out without throwing her over my shoulder and ripping off her pretty little clothes.
“What’s that?”
“I never got to see you pregnant before, and I didn’t get the pleasure of making Trixie with you, even though she’s mine. If you want another baby—throw that damn birth control away tonight and let’s see if we can get you knocked up before we book our wedding at the Santa Barbara Courthouse.”
She laughs and nods and kisses me again, this time passionate and desperate, her fingers flying over the buttons of my shirt and ripping it off of me even as I lift her and carry her back to her bedroom.
“Remember—be quiet,” she says.
I nudge the door closed with my foot, and it shuts softly.
When I throw her down on the bed and yank off her skirt, I decide to let my hands do the talking.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saint doesn’t let me sit around and feel guilty.
Instead, here I am, lying on my back, wearing only my black lace panties, hands covering my breasts, as he instructed. My shirt, skirt and bra lay heaped in a pile at the end of the bed. I’m pretty sure there’s a rip in my shirt from where he frantically pulled it off—but it serves me right since I’m sure as well that there are buttons missing from the base of his shirt.
And he’s naked, standing in front of me, just watching me, stroking himself.
I’ll never get used to seeing his cock. It’s the biggest I’ve ever seen, and it takes my breath away every time he pushes himself inside me.
I’m glad he came tonight, glad that I was wrong.
Because he’s ruined me for other men. I’m sure no one in the world could give as much pleasure as he gives when he pushes himself inside of me and fills me like I’ve never been filled before.
